Cell phone unlocking becomes a crime on Saturday

Today, unlocking your new cell phone so it can be used on another carrier isn’t illegal. Tomorrow, that will change.

That’s because the Librarian of Congress – the official in charge of interpreting the Digital Millenium Copyright Act – has ruled that cell phone unlocking is a violation of that law. The librarian announced this position back in October, but gave a 90-day window before the decision takes effect. That window closes Saturday.

You can read the full ruling here [PDF], but here’s the pertinent part:

The Register concluded after a review of the statutory factors that an exemption to the prohibition on circumvention of mobile phone computer programs to permit users to unlock “legacy” phones is both warranted and unlikely to harm the market for such programs. At the same time, in light of carriers’ current unlocking policies and the ready availability of new unlocked phones in the marketplace, the record did not support an exemption for newly purchased phones. Looking to precedents in copyright law, the Register recommended that the class designated by the Librarian include a 90-day transitional period to allow unlocking by those who may acquire phones shortly after the new exemption goes into effect.

Right now, most phones are purchased for use on a specific carrier. In order for them to work on other carriers that utilize the same frequencies, handset owners must unlock them. In most cases, carriers will only provide unlock codes after a certain amount of time, which varies depending on the phone and the carrier.

You can, of course, buy phones that are unlocked from the beginning. For example, Verizon’s version of the iPhone 5 comes with an unlocked SIM slot right out of the box. Google sells its Nexus 4 smartphone unlocked. Typically, though, unlocked phones cost a lot more than locked ones, usually because the latter are subsidized through carrier contracts.

And note that unlocking a phone is different from jailbreaking, which opens the phone up to the installation of non-standard applications and modifications.

In response to this ruling, a petition to legalize unlocking has been started at the White House’s We The People site. The Obama Administration responds to petitions which draw more than 100,000 signatures. (The previous threshold was 25,000.) At this writing, the petition has drawn just over 3,000 signatures, but it has until Feb. 23 to reach the goal.